The Shield We Could Borrow: Designing an Unofficial Crest for Tollcross

Tollcross has no coat of arms. No charter, no grant from the Lord Lyon, no medieval seal pressed into hot wax. This is not a scandal. Most neighbourhoods do not have one. But Tollcross is the sort of place that accumulates symbols whether or not anyone grants permission, and that makes the idea of a crest less like fantasy and more like tidying up.

This is an argument, not a petition. Nobody needs to write to the authorities. The point is not to secure official arms for a district of Edinburgh that has managed perfectly well without them. The point is to ask what we would put on a shield if we had to explain Tollcross to someone who had never been here — and what those choices reveal about the place.

Why a crossroads deserves a shield

Heraldry is often mistaken for aristocracy. Really, it is a system of recognition: a way of saying this is who we are, this is what we do, this is where we meet. A crossroads is already a kind of emblem. Roads arrive, pause, and leave again. People change direction. Trade passes through. Tollcross has always been a junction before it has been anything else, and a junction is a good place to start a design.

The absence of official arms is not an absence of identity. It is simply an absence of paperwork. A neighbourhood can have a story without a charter, and a crest can be a way of reading that story out loud.

The boundary stone: honest, heavy, useful

If I were drawing up a hypothetical shield, the boundary stone would be the central charge. Not because it is beautiful — it is not — but because it is honest. A boundary stone does not pretend to be a monument. It marks an edge, a limit, a place where one thing becomes another. Tollcross has always been a place of edges: between the city centre and the suburbs, between the canal and the streets, between the old burgh and the expanding town.

A stone also suggests something stubborn. It stays put. It does not care whether you are coming or going. In heraldic terms, that is a useful quality for a neighbourhood that has been reshaped by traffic, theatres, students, shops and flats but has never quite lost its shape as a crossing point.

Two masks and a curtain call

The King's Theatre gives Tollcross one of its most recognisable symbols: the pair of masks that suggest comedy and tragedy, performance and audience. If the boundary stone belongs on the shield, the masks belong above it as a crest. They are not decorative flourishes. They are a reminder that Tollcross is a place where people go out, stay late and come home talking about what they have seen.

The masks also carry a useful warning. A neighbourhood can be many things at once. Comedy and tragedy sit side by side. A full house and an empty street can exist on the same evening. A crest that only showed the glamorous side of Tollcross would be a poor crest indeed.

Water, time and the old clock

The Union Canal is the quiet symbol. It does not shout for attention, but it runs nearby and it gives Tollcross a watery edge that is easy to forget. On a shield, a wavy band would do the job: a line of water cutting across the field, suggesting movement, transport and the old industrial life of the area.

Then there is the old clock. Clocks are tricky symbols because they can feel fussy, but this one earns its place. A clock face is about time, routine, shifts, opening hours and the small daily rhythms that make a neighbourhood work. It is also a reminder that Tollcross is not a museum piece. It is a place where people are always arriving, leaving, waiting and running late.

A plain-Scots blazon

If we had to describe the hypothetical crest in plain language, it might go something like this: a shield divided by a wavy band for the canal, with a boundary stone at the centre and a clock face in the upper corner. Above the shield, two theatre masks. Below it, a motto that does not try too hard. Something like Aye at the Cross would do nicely.

None of this is official. That is the point. It is a design exercise, not a claim of ancient right. But it is a useful one, because it forces us to decide what matters. Do we lead with culture or with transport? With history or with daily life? With the stone that marks the edge or the water that passes through?

What heraldry cannot fix

A crest will not fill a pothole, save a shopfront or settle an argument about bin collections. It will not make a neighbourhood more affordable or more connected. Heraldry is not policy. It is storytelling with better spacing.

But storytelling has its uses. A place that can describe itself is easier to defend. A place that knows its symbols is harder to flatten into a generic stretch of city. Tollcross does not need a coat of arms to justify its existence, but it might enjoy having one to argue about.

Draw it on a napkin

The best thing about an unofficial crest is that anyone can make one. You do not need a grant, a committee or a heraldic artist. You need a pen and a vague sense of what Tollcross means to you. Perhaps your shield would have a bus stop, a bag of chips, a theatre ticket, a canal bridge, a row of tenement windows or the clock that has watched the junction for longer than most of us have been here.

That is the real invitation. Not to wait for official permission, but to notice what is already lying around. Tollcross has no coat of arms. It has something better: a collection of symbols that are still in use, still argued over and still capable of telling a story. A place does not need a charter to have a crest worth borrowing.